


roses and bloody thorns

by greywardenblue



Category: October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Fictober 2019, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23171947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywardenblue/pseuds/greywardenblue
Summary: There is enough trauma in this family for several generations. Or, the one where Rayseline (and August) actually try to deal with things.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts in this work:  
> "Change is annoyingly difficult."  
> "I know you didn't ask for this."

The two women were sitting next to each other in their elaborate dresses, both with roses on them, and they weren’t talking. Gillian watched them for a few moments, then walked over and sat down.

“Hi,” she said.

Rayseline shot her a nasty look then turned away, and August didn’t even move. Gillian didn’t back off.

“I wanted to ask you about something. Your blood was shifted too, right? But you were never a changeling.”

Rayseline sighed, like it was such a chore for her to even answer. “No, I wasn’t. I was always fully fae, but I was… more mixed. But I’m fully Daoine Sidhe now, _thanks_ to your mom and mine, because I clearly wasn’t good enough the way I was.”

“At least you had a choice about which way to go,” August said.

Raysel turned on her immediately. “Oh, you’re talking? With your loving parents and perfect childhood? _You’re_ talking?”

“I spent a hundred years in Deep Faerie on my own!”

“I spent _an eternity_ in a dark HOLE, thanks to your Dad!”

“And my mom was a fish for fourteen years!” Gillian interrupted. “Seriously! And I was kidnapped twice, and I could tell you all about that, but I think you know more about the first one than I do.” Raysel blushed and avoided her eyes, but didn’t say anything. Gillian continued. “And yes, I had a pretty okay childhood, other than wondering why my mom left me. But my blood was changed three times since then, and I never had a choice about it. Not once! Even when they actually asked me, choosing between something you don’t want or certain death is not a choice, it’s just not!”

She didn’t realize she was shouting until she was done. August and Rayseline stared at her, waiting for her to finish.

“Feel better?” August asked.

“A little,” Gillian admitted.

“I always feel better for a bit after screaming my head off,” Rayseline said. “Not for long, though.”

Gillian thought for a moment. “You know, Professor Davies has a list of changeling therapists who have degrees from the human world but also know about Faerie. He hands them out to fae students at Berkeley. I could get a copy for each of you, if you want.”

They stared.

“For what?” Raysel asked.

“Well, so that… you can… go and talk to someone? I’ve been going to one of them since the whole kidnapping thing, and I like her a lot.”

August frowned. “I don’t want to talk to some stupid changeling. I want my father back. Can they do that?”

Gillian rolled her eyes. “No, but they might be able to work out why you’re such a bitch and help you not be like that.”

“For what? So I can be the way your mother wants me to be?” August shook her head. “My mother wants me to be one way, and my uncle and Patrick and _your_ mother wants me to be another way -- they all want me to change to fit them, but nobody cares what I want.”

“Everyone wants me to change, too,” Rayseline said. She seemed to be following a bug on the ground with her eyes instead of looking at either of them. “Change is… annoyingly difficult. Shifting my blood was not enough, now they want me to be nice to people, too?”

“Being nice to people shouldn’t be that hard,” Gillian said.

Rayseline looked up to glare at her. “It is, when I feel like I’m screaming inside all the time. And being dragged around and married off like some kind of ragdoll. It’s exhausting. I don’t have the energy to be nice on top of that.”

“Is there a cousin reunion I wasn’t invited to?” A woman Gillian hadn’t met before approached them, trying to get multiple tiny branches out of her hair. “I see you’re standing in for your mother,” she said to Gillian.

“Hi, January,” August said. 

“Oh! You’re April’s mom. Hi,” Gillian said. She hadn’t really met April either, but she was there once when Quentin Skyped her to ask for technical help. A cyber-dryad wasn’t even the weirdest thing she’d seen in Faerie, but it was close.

“Yeah, yeah, we get it, you all have cool month names that I’m left out of,” Rayseline said, rolling her eyes.

“We can start calling you March, if that will make you feel better,” January said. “But I don’t think your mother meant to left you out. She was just following a different tradition.”

Raysel frowned and crossed her arms, leaning back on the bench. “I’d rather be February. It’s colder, darker, and it’s the shortest, so it doesn’t have to put up with everyone else that long.”

January was unfazed. “Okay.”

Raysel looked taken aback, and she looked at the other two to see what they think. August and Gillian only shrugged, not protesting. 

January smiled brightly, then seemed to remember something. “Oh, right, I was looking for my Uncle. I’ll see you girls later.” She walked off, and Gillian thought she heard her mumbling something about having to be the mature one.

“I’d better go find my Mom,” Gillian said, but before she walked away, she didn’t miss that Rayseline was smiling in the direction January disappeared in.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quotes in italics are from Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson.

The book was lying on one of the chairs in the rose garden. On the cover, there was a human girl in a swimsuit with a huge beach ball staring into the camera. It must have been left there by the Tuatha girl, the changeling girl who grew up human and wasn’t changeling anymore.

She had never read a book by a human before, and she had no idea what this one was about. But the title called out to her like a voice from the darkness, so she reached out and took it.

This was her home. This was her knowe. Everything here belonged to her. She could take the book if she wanted.

This was hers. This was hers.

Something had to be hers.

She sat on her bed in her dark room with just enough light, and she read it.

_Why is the measure of love loss?_

It was dark in the hole and her mother held her, her mother was there, but there was nothing else. Roses don’t grow in the dark. When they came back, it wasn’t right. There was too much light that hurt her eyes, too much attention, too many people.

Her father looked like a stranger. And they wanted her to marry? They wanted her to love? They wanted her to have more to lose?

 _There are times when it will go so wrong that you will barely be alive, and times when you realize that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else’s terms_.

“I know you didn’t ask for this,” her mother said. “But Connor is a good man. He is a kind man. He will be good to you.”

She didn’t want to be good to him. She didn’t want to be somebody else’s idea of good.

 _Even now when I’m furious, what I would like to do is to punch the infuriating person flat on the ground. That solves nothing I know, and I spent a lot of time understanding my own violence, which is not of the pussycat kind. There are people who could never commit murder; I am not one of those people. It’s better to know it, better to know who you are, and what lies in you, and what you could do, might do, under extreme provocation_.

…

There were parts where she had to put the book down and walk around her room, parts where she had to hit the wall with her first and scream, scream, scream.

 _The demented creature in me was a lost child. She was willing to be told a story. The grown-up me had to tell it to her_.

Time was flowing away from her before she could catch it. The drops of time gathered together in one pool, merging together, impossible to pick apart.

She was a child in a rose garden. She was a child in a dark hole. She was a married woman. She was a murderer. She was sleeping, sleeping, sleeping.

She was woken up and and she was put on trial and she stood as other people explained that she didn’t really mean it and it wasn’t really her fault and she wanted to scream and tell them that they were wrong that it was her that she chose to do this but then she didn’t. October was there too, October spoke for her, but she knew it wasn’t for her, it was for her father.

 _I have had to live out some of her unlived life. We do that for our parents - we don’t really have any choice_.

“I know you didn’t ask for this,” October said, and her eyes were tired. Her parents had sent October in to talk to her. She didn’t know why they thought that would help. 

“I did ask for this,” she said. “I wanted the magic. I wanted to be well. I _did_ ask for this. But my mother wanted me to choose the other one, didn’t she?”

October was quiet. “Your mother only wants you,” she said. “However you are. She just wants you, but she doesn’t have you back yet, and she’s afraid she never will.”

She sat down and hugged herself, and when October put a hand on her shoulder, she only bit her hand a little.

_A few months later we were having our afternoon walk when I said something about how nobody had cuddled us when we were little. I said ‘us’, not 'you’. She held my hand. She had never done that before; mainly she walked behind shooting her sentences._ _We both sat down and cried._

“Where is your daughter?” she asked October.

October flinched. “She is with her father. She… she is a selkie now. No, she’s Roane.”

She had been married to a selkie before. She remembered taking the skin - not Connor’s, another skin - and she remembered holding the crossbow with the elfshot, and she remembered luring the girl she used to play with away from her family.

October hadn’t mentioned either of those things since she woke up. They came up at the trial, of course, but October didn’t mention them to _her_.

“I kidnapped her,” she said. “I hurt her. I killed _him_. I tried to kill my parents. I could kill you. Right now, I could kill you.” Her voice was hysterical, and October looked at her with sad eyes.

“I know,” October said.

“Just think about it,” October said.

“Call me if you decide,” October said.

 _I was in danger of drowning and nobody lost at sea worries about whether the spar they cling to is made of elm or oak_.

“I’ll go,” she said. “I’ll go, but only if you come with me. You have to be there. You have to listen to me say all the things I want to say. I will go, but only if you come.”

“Okay,” October said.

_Going mad takes time. Getting sane takes time._

_What I want does exist if I dare to find it._

_I said, 'We will learn how to love.’_


End file.
